The Hobbyist

Sometimes you just want to jump into the caravan and go away, eh?  This is a film scan, not the Monochrom, just so you know.

My friends from Yosemite came to the house last night.  They met Ili.  It was early, a pleasant cheese and wine living room thing.  Somewhere in the conversation, my buddy's wife asked if I still had my studio.  I said yes.  She asked if I was still making pictures there, and I said no, not since I met Ili.  Later, after they were gone, the "discussion" began.  Of course nobody wants to be the reason for anything.  "I want you to do what you want to do," is perhaps the most dangerous thing you will ever be told, for you know if you do what you want to do, you will not be the only one and what someone wants to do is often enough a result of what you have done.  Life is fluid as are emotions and desires. One day you are this, the next day that.  You are in a relationship, then you are not.  When you reach a certain level of experience, you realize that you cannot count on tomorrow let alone "forever."  And when you reach that level, you are apt to be categorized as "guarded."  And so you make choices and try to make them without emotion or regret.  Knowing what you want to do is the most difficult thing in life.  Most people don't know what they want to eat let alone who they want to be.  Except for a little bit of technical training here and there that enables us to do a job, we don't do much to direct where our lives go.  Things just seem to happen.

So for me, "I want you to do what you want" is a conversation stopper.  That exchange will go nowhere pleasant.

But I was stupid, I think, and must have said something else for we began to discuss my. . . my what? Turns out is is just a hobby, it seems, and I just keep doing the same thing over and over.  A hobby like collecting coins or stamps or baseball cards, I asked?  It is a hobby because I don't make any money at it.  So there is that.  It is something I have been flaunting, and now I am embarrassed.

By many things.  I've just spent money I don't have on a camera that I don't need at a time when I am having household repairs done.  It is, objectively. . . stupid.  Like this blog.  A vanity.

I woke this morning fairly sick.  Maybe it was from the sushi we had last night after the cheese and wine.  Maybe something else.  I don't know.  But I didn't sleep well and when I got up this morning, I had a general, all around lack of proper functioning.

I guess I won't be shooting the transexual.  Or anyone.  Not for a while, anyway.  Get ready for the hobbyist's photos of flowers and fire hydrants.  In black and white, though.  That is the hobbyist's attempt of being "arty" I guess.